-- NASA administrator
Mike Griffin told an aerospace industry audience here Thursday that awarding
contracts for development of the Ares I rocket is the U.S. space agency's top
procurement priority for 2007.

NASA's major
planned procurement activities for 2007 include awarding seperate separate contracts for the production
of the Ares I upper stage and avionics unit, building a satellite to replace the Landsat 7 Earth-imaging
satellite and ordering new Tracking and Data Relay Satellites to replenish the
constellation already on orbit.

But with
Congress planning to fund most federal agencies at their 2006 levels again this
year rather than passing new spending bills, NASA's challenge will be to keep
those procurements on track with a budget roughly $500 million less than it was
expecting.

Asked which
procurements NASA intends to pursue this year, Griffin said he hoped to do them
all but that the highest priority would be to put the Ares I work under
contract.

"Until the
Congress tells me otherwise I intend to do them all. My highest priority of
course is the Ares upper stage and the whole Ares vehicle," Griffin said
following a speech at a breakfast here sponsored by the Space Transportation
Association.

Griffin said
setting the agency's priorities for the year would be done in consultation with
the White House and Congress, noting that the legislature has the final say on
spending matters.

"I certainly don't get a veto, but I get a vote," he said. "To the extent to which I get a
vote, replacing our ability to put our own people into space by our own means
and to do so reliably and above all else safely is our number two priority at
NASA," Griffin said, referring to the agency's efforts to field the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle [image] and its Ares I rocket [image] no later than 2014 - four years
after the space shuttle is due to be retired. "Our number
one priority is to finish assembly of the international space station and
continue to fly the shuttle safely."

"Everything
else comes after that and I hope to do as much of all of the rest of our
priorities as Congress allows with the budget that they pass," he said.